Will Rick Perry Be the Energy Department’s Undoing?

President-elect Donald Trump has picked several people to lead federal departments who are hostile to the work of those agencies. On Tuesday, he went a step further by choosing Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, to head the Department of Energy, an agency that Mr. Perry once promised to eliminate.

During a televised debate in 2011, Mr. Perry said he wanted to abolish the department but struggled to recall its name. That incident — which helped doom his campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination — betrayed not only poor memory but also ignorance about the department’s critical national security role. About 60 percent of the department’s budget is dedicated to managing the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal and operating nuclear nonproliferation and counterterrorism programs. Much of the rest of its budget finances research in basic sciences, fossil fuels and newer sources of energy, like wind and solar power.

Mr. Perry has denied that human activity is responsible for climate change, something that virtually all scientists agree on. Mr. Trump himself has described climate change as a “hoax” perpetrated by China, a preposterous claim backed by no evidence. This month, Mr. Trump’s transition team sent a questionnaire to the Energy Department asking for the names of employees who had attended certain climate change meetings. The Obama administration rejected the request, fearing that the employees would be marginalized or targeted for retaliation by the new administration.

As governor of Texas, Mr. Perry was a champion of the oil and gas industry, but he also supported wind power, which boomed in the state under his watch. He backed policies requiring the use of renewable energy sources and a $5 billion investment in transmission lines to bring power from wind farms in remote areas to big cities. Wind turbines accounted for 12 percent of all electricity produced in Texas in 2015, up from 3 percent in 2007.

Mr. Perry could prove his doubters wrong by expanding investment in breakthrough energy technologies like advanced nuclear reactors, high-capacity batteries and electrical grids that can better accommodate variable power suppliers. Doing so could bolster the economy, create good-paying jobs and reduce the cost of energy, according to a report published on Tuesday by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Those efforts would also help avert the worst effects of climate change, something that would benefit large parts of Texas and the country that are vulnerable to more intense storms and droughts and rising sea levels.

The big question, of course, is whether Mr. Perry and Mr. Trump have the interest or ability to pursue an ambitious agenda, or whether they are determined to carry on an ideological war against climate science.